Before and after the annual March for Life on January 23, the capitol was host to a dizzying array of receptions and conferences, masses and youth summits and strategy sessions--an ingathering of the pro-life tribe. .... But there were newcomers, too: .... This reporter found herself in a conference room at the Family Research Council on G Street at the first-ever convention of antiabortion cyberati, Blogs for Life.
....
How to mobilize support for the fait accompli named Alito never even came up at Blogs for Life. Instead the talk was of passing state legislation--a scholar with the Heritage Foundation was hawking his new study, which uses shaky statistics to show that parental consent requirements, partial-birth abortion bans and "informed consent" legislation, which often requires women to hear untruths about the medical risks of abortion before they can get one, each reduce the actual number of abortions in the states that enact them--and of reaching across the prochoice/pro-life divide. ....
... Charmaine Yoest ... and her small army of conservative bloggers have to contend with a "pro-life" legacy of clinic bombings (forty-one), assassinations of doctors (seven), confrontational clinic blockades (731) and a general atmosphere of hostility toward women.
Clearly Kaplan's crib sheet from NARAL was twice as important to the author as her notes from the actual conference. But hey, at least she paid attention, and, judging from this, went on to actually read my blog:
Christina Dunnigan, who runs a site called Cemetery of Choice ("For some reason, my calling is the dead"), refers to the self-righteous pro-lifers who wave pictures of bloody fetuses as "banshees" who suffer from the sin of pride. She says she wants to reach the "other side," and quotes the work of sociologist James Davison Hunter, who broke down the ideological spectrum into such categories as the "privately pro-life" and the "reticent prochoice." "They're a real target," said Dunnigan. "I think those folks could be a juggernaut."
Our friends at After Abortion got some ink, too, though Kaplan confuses them with the After Abortion web site at the beginning of the paragraph and with LaShawn Barber at the end:
Much of the talk was focused admiringly on sites like Afterabortion.com (which has more than 10,000 registered users) and Afterabortion.blogspot.com that encourage women to tell their own stories about experiencing abortions--as long as they follow a storyline of loss, regret, emotional trauma and healing through Christ. "If they're not a Christian and truly forgiven by their savior," said LaShawn Barber, who blogs at LaShawn Barber's Corner, "they'll never be free from the pain."
So though she visited my blog, Kaplan didn't spend much time with Emily and Annie. And the venom really starts to seep through:
For years, watchers of the far right have been tracking this shift in the antiabortion movement. The rise of so-called "crisis pregnancy centers," which deceive women about their mission but project a veneer of concern; the launch of Silent No More and other organizations that focus attention on the ambivalence of women who've terminated their pregnancies ...; the creation of such organizations as Feminists for Life, which assert themselves as the true defenders of women's rights against the voracious "abortion industry"--all are part of a carefully planned strategic shift.
If I recall correctly, the CPC's have been around for over thirty years, and though SNM is recent it's just a focusing of efforts like WEBA, which has been around for decades. And I think Feminists for Life was founded in the 1970s. Again, the NARAL crib sheet instead of any actual research. Still, Kaplan mentioned that they exist, which is an improvement over typical, "Look! It's Paul Hill! And the Army of God! And that, folks, is all there is in the antichoice camp!"
But the rest of the article goes on in this vein. I'll spare you extensive snippets, since it's all regurgitated from NARAL, PP, and NAF fact sheets and press releases anyway. The last paragraph, however, does warrant mention:
But the movement's new hubris is most hilariously on display in the much-linked "Battle of the Babes", which purports to settle the reproductive rights debate once and for all by posting photos of marchers from the recent Walk for Life in San Francisco and asking "who is cuter--the prolife gals...or the pro-choice womyn?" It is the parade of virginal pro-life Catholic teens who will "win this epic battle and determine the future of America," apparently. Just as long as they don't renege on those abstinence pledges and find themselves at the door of their local Planned Parenthood.
Um, Esther -- the "Battle of the Babes" was an inside joke posted by Zombie, who isn't even a blogger. It just happened to catch the eye of a lot of people who got it. The fact that you don't get it shows how little you understand us.
In closing, I bit my tongue quite a bit and made a brief, civil reply:
RE: For Pro-Life Bloggers, a New Hubris
I do appreciate that I was fairly represented, and that a link was provided to the Cemetery of Choice.
I remain somewhat puzzled, however, as to why we're viewed as somehow anti-woman. The vast majority of us *are* women, and many of us (myself included) were drawn to the prolife movement specifically because of the harm we've seen done to women by abortion practitioners.
So, overall, I'd give the article a C-. Which is a huge improvement over the D- most media coverage deserves.
Thanks again for the ink!
Christina Dunigan
No comments:
Post a Comment